One player is Heads the other being Tails (so that there will be no confusion upon which coin belongs to whom.) Every time you *take* a coin piece you may retain it.
This works
with Australian currency so I can only imagine it would work with others.

This is a pretty cool idea, but what about the peices left
on the board? does the winner get to take them all? this
would change the tactics of chess as the looser could
still come out with more money.

One doesn't see many (US) two dollar bills in circualtion because so many casual collectors think they're too special to spend and many others find the denomination to be too awkward for their spending habits. But they are still quite readily available from just about any bank teller if you ask. The same holds true for the dollar and half-dollar coins.

What's really funny is watching a cashier at a major retailer refuse [somebody else's] two dollar bill claiming that there's no such thing as a two dollar bill. At that point I usually make a big production out of making change for the person trying to spend the perfectly legitimate currency.

I used to do this (kind of). There were almost always missing pieces from chess sets at school, so we would replace the missing pieces with money. Pawns were usually pennies, Rooks 2p, etc (depending on what change we had from our 'lunch money').

Or the resistance to a $1 coin. Now that inflation has made it so that most things in vending machines cost around $1, I think the time for the US to come to terms with the $1 coin has come. Otherwise we're likely to spend 1/2 our life in front of a vending machine going zeet/zoot, zeet/zoot, zeet/zoot while we keep putting in the dollar bill and it keeps spitting it back out.

£1 notes are 'phased out' in England but they are still alive and kicking in Scotland. This makes for more good fun when travelling Scots present their selection of slightly differently minted monies, only to be told that its fake.

Had a cance to talk to a Canuk over the weekend that hails from the far North areas of the country. He sais up there it gets cold enough that metals in coins kept in a purse shrink appreciably.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but "twonies" (two dollar coins) are bi-metalic -- a disk of one metal surrounded by a ring of another metal. Seems that when reheated, the outer metal in a twonie expands first, and the center drops out.

//My apologies i played this the other day and the winner keeps everything i think it added up to $5 a side.//

If the winner keeps everything? I dont see the point of this idea. It amounts to betting $5 a side & playing normal chess. I like the possibility of keeping only the pieces you kill - that makes for different strategy.

[waugs], me neither. But it's there, and you grow up thinking that 2 dollar bills are really special. My dad used to give us two dollar bills for school lunch money. I then convinced this kid that it was rare and worth alot, but we were so poor I had to spend it to eat. He then traded his five dollar bill for my two. It was a good day that day! (unfortunately the next was not so good) :)

And the board is made from a page of paper, squared then folded in half once, twice, and a last time (for 8 even spaces between 7 creases) both horizontally and vertically. You can trace the creases with pencile or pen if you like, then shade every other square.

I can't remember how you remember which color the first square is.

If you have to record the game, trace the coins and write in the pieces.

Really good idea. Unfortunately, most games played for money these days seem to eventually degenerate into a Texas Hold-em poker tournament, since everyone now seems to be an "expert", and theyre all willing to lose $5 each hand. [James Newton], I fear that your paper chess board may get torn up by the poker thugs. [babyhawk] its always good to hear stories from others about how, as kids, they accidentally tricked the less wise kids out of something or other.

$1 coins are just too clunky to deal with. In the states, we hate counting out coinage, mostly it just ends up sitting in a jar somewhere. It's not thought of as a significant sum of money, and it's handy not to. If we had loonies and twonies people would be force to sort through their change for the larger denominations. Too much to bother with when you're on the go and are holding up the cash line.